This black comedy about terminal cancer patients escaping for one last fling stares death in the face and laughs, but takes too long to get to the punch line.

This black comedy about terminal cancer patients escaping for one last fling stares death in the face and laughs, but takes too long to get to the punch line.

From the start, it’s clear that director Robert Ellis Miller is using the script about men facing an early death to examine how people deal with their fears and how they try or fail to disguise it from others.

In this instance, terminal bone cancer pits lawyer Bancroft (Timothy Dalton) and ex-football pro Decker (Anthony Edwards) together in a team effort to thwart their disease (and the ward nurses) with laughs, grit and a last pilgrimage to a Dutch bordello.

Dalton goes a bit overboard as Bancroft, occasionally stretching believability. Edwards plays it straight as the Yank jock, but brings out the laconic ladies’ man in his character despite being nonambulatory much of the time.